The 29-year-old overcame several injuries during his career, but lingering effects of vertigo spell end of decorated run

Calgary’s John Kucera charges down the lower section of the Lake Louise Winterstart World Cup Super-G race in 2012. His decorated ski career as one of the Canadian Cowboys leaves a solid legacy for the next generation of Canuck ski racers to aspire to.

Photograph by: Gavin Young
, Calgary Herald

Standing alone, 5,463 feet above sea level at the top of the Streif downhill track on the legendary Hahnenkamm in Kitzbuhel, Austria, facing a plunge at speeds upwards of 106 mph on a 2,800-foot descent, is not exactly the ideal place to feel even the slightest bit light-headed.

“Who would’ve thought,” mused John Kucera in the Alpine Canada offices at Canada Olympic Park, announcing his retirement from competitive ski racing on Thursday, “that the thing that finally would’ve taken me out is waking up dizzy one morning.”

He had overcome so much — a broken leg, back problems and three years of rehabilitation — to make a triumphant return at Lake Louise last season, but the ongoing uncertainty of vestibular neuritis — a severe inner ear condition that causes vertigo — prompted Thursday’s announcement.

At 29, John Kucera leaves having made his mark. He collected three career World Cup medals in super-G, including gold at home at Lake Louise in 2006, then shook up the ski world by winning the world downhill title in Val d’Isere, France in 2009.

For racers blessed with half a dozen more seasons, such as legacy would be more than enough.

“It’s been a great ride,” said Kucera. “Obviously the last four years haven’t gone exactly the way I would’ve liked them to. That being said, I felt the time was right to step away now.

“My love for the sport, the thrill of competition, never changed. The legs, the back . . . those are injuries that come with sport. Not my sport. Just sport in general. You’re out there pushing the limits, you get hurt and you have a timeline. You do rehab, you’re going to get better and you’re going to get back into it.

“This vestibular neuritis, this vertigo, though, is a tough one. There is no timeline. Everybody says that eventually you will be a hundred per cent. And there’s exercises you can do. But at the end of the day, it’s completely speculation on how long it’ll take.

“I could be good by July. Or I could be good by next July. And really nobody can give me that answer.

“This decision didn’t come in the last couple of weeks. I thought about it all winter. I think Mike Janyk said it perfectly. He said: You wake up one day and you know you’re done. I can feel it inside.

“So I don’t think I was ‘forced out.’ When I kinda looked at it from the adversity that’s still there, that uncertainty moving forward . . . I think my body just told me it was time to start doing something else.”

That something else is coaching, long a career objective. He’ll be joining the national team program as an assistant development coach to Kip Harrington.

Thursday, though, was as much a time to look back as ahead. Kucera thanked everyone from his sponsors over the years to his coaches, teammates and parents Jan and Zdena and younger brother James.

It’s just you in that start gate. But nobody reaches his kind of level on their own.

“My family obviously made huge sacrifices, allowing me to even be a ski racer. From the time I was 12 until the time I got my first sponsors, it was a struggle. Two mortgages. My brother had to make the ultimate sacrifice where he couldn’t pursue his athletic dream because our family couldn’t afford to have two athletes at a high level.

“I’ll be forever grateful for that opportunity.”

That downhill world championship at Val d’Isere is, “on paper”, he agrees, the highlight of a career. But Kucera scans back to winning his first World Cup title at Lake Louise at 21 as another cameo keepsake moment, as well as the return to competition from three years of not leaving a start gate to finish 14th last winter at Louise.

He came into prominence alongside a group of talented young races, foremost among them Erik Guay, Manuel Osborne-Paradis and Jan Hudec. They were christened the Canadian Cowboys and elevated ski racing in this country to new levels.

“Now with Jan’s medal (a bronze medal in the super-G at the Sochi Games, Canada’s first Olympic medal in men’s alpine in two decades) we’ve really done it all. The only thing you can really say we haven’t done yet, I guess, is we don’t have an Olympic champion. As a group, though, we pulled off some special things; we superseded the Crazy Canuck era. Two world champions. Erik has a Crystal Globe. Now there’s a bronze medallist. There’s a whole group of guys and we did it together.

“I think we’ve set the bar pretty for the next group coming up.

“But I think that’s where it needs to be.”

Kucera admits he is far from completely free of the symptoms of the vertigo.

“Most of the time, I feel totally fine. But if there’s a big weather change, a chinook comes in or up above all line with flat light, that kinda stuff stirs me up. Or if I do a lot of head motion.

“The easiest way to describe it, it’s almost starts out like a bit of fogginess and then if I stay in that and it persists it’ll almost be a carsick/nausea type feeling. It’s really hard to explain. It’s not like a can’t function but I’m a little fuzzy. Almost like having a concussion.”

Twenty-nine isn’t a particularly long, or fair, run for someone of his ability or achievement, particularly when the last four years have been in essence stolen by forces beyond your control.

Yet John Kucera insists he doesn’t feel cheated. There’s no sense of bitterness in his voice, no plaintive ‘Why me?’ in his outlook.

“I don’t,” he emphasizes, “want the injuries to be the main focus here. Injuries are the reality of sport. So I don’t look back on it with regret, with this, that and the other thing.

“I took my chance and I did some things in this country that I was the first to do. And I look back on that with pride. Woulda’s, coulda’s, shoulda’s . . . we all have ’em.

“I’m just really proud that I managed to take a very short career and do big things with it.”

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Calgary’s John Kucera charges down the lower section of the Lake Louise Winterstart World Cup Super-G race in 2012. His decorated ski career as one of the Canadian Cowboys leaves a solid legacy for the next generation of Canuck ski racers to aspire to.

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